Kate Emery: Your ‘meaningful’ birth isn’t worth more than a child’s life

The video shows a naked, panting woman on a bed. Don’t worry: it’s not that kind of a video (this isn’t that kind of newspaper). Over two minutes or so the tiny head, just visible between her legs, emerges to become a baby cradled in her arms. The mum is Christy, a 45-year-old from Queensland and the video is one of hundreds shared on a website featuring women giving birth at home, in paddling pools or, in one case, in an ashram. Doubtless there are YouTube videos that should worry me more. But their subject —freebirthing or wild birthing — makes me grumpier than everyone who turned off the Olympics when the Matildas were down 4-2 to Zambia, only to wake up to a 6-5 win. Unlike US Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, I’m not overly invested in policing the personal lives of others. Want to invest your life savings in crypto or NFTs? It’s your money, bro (yes, it’s always a bro). Want to eat your child’s placenta or use a piece of crystal instead of deodorant? You do you, girl (yes, it’s always a girl). What frustrates me about freebirthing propaganda is that it puts babies at risk with its claims that giving birth is natural (true), therefore a pregnant woman is the expert on her own body (less true) and that modern medicine’s role in childbirth is simply patriarchal oppression (bulls..t). Let me catch you up real quick. Freebirthing often happens at home, but it’s not the same as a home birth, which is typically overseen by a registered health professional, usually a midwife. Freebirthers, by comparison, aim to have a baby without medical intervention. That means no ultrasounds to see how many babies are in there or how they’re developing. No tests that might indicate a high-risk pregnancy. No medical help in an emergency. In online groups women reassure each other that a high-risk pregnancy, a breech baby or previous caesarean sections are no obstacle to giving birth at home, alone. It’s natural, you see. Freebirthing is a return to simpler times, before birth was medicalised and when the rate of infant mortality in Australia was 103 per 1000 live births (1900) and not fewer than three per 1000 live births (2024). You might have seen headlines about twin babies who died in Byron Bay this year in an apparent freebirth gone wrong, or remember the baby girl who died during a freebirth in the Perth suburb of Wattle Grove in 2022 after becoming stuck during labour. Those aren’t isolated incidents and we’ll see more deaths if freebirthing continues to grow in popularity, thanks in part to social media, which tends to show the highlights (Candlelight! A smiling baby!) not the risks (A tiny coffin! A lifetime of grief!) If you detect a lack of sympathy for women who value their need for a meaningful birth experience above the health of their unborn child, you’re right. But it’s not all their fault: there are systemic failures here, too. At Western Sydney University, Hannah Dahlen has been studying the reasons behind the movement. Her research suggests one big reason some women opt for a freebirth is a past traumatic birth experience and a lack of alternatives in Australia, where it can be hard to get access to a publicly-funded home birth attended by a midwife. Some freebirthers might opt for a home birth or a low-intervention birthing centre if those options were available, inexpensive and judgement-free. In my words, not Professor Dahlen’s, the medical establishment’s (somewhat understandable) resistance to home births and low-intervention pregnancies risks driving women to strangers on the internet all too willing to tell them they’re a goddess who can absolutely VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean section) those breech twins. Freebirthing is a fringe choice: just 0.9 per cent of WA births are at home and only a slice of those would be freebirths. But if we can make planned home births or low-intervention births safer, more accessible and cheaper for those who want them, that slice might just go microscopic. Because while I’m happy for Christy that it all worked out for her, anybody who thinks modern medicine is ruining childbirth should acquaint themselves with a historic graph of infant mortality — ideally before they swap ultrasounds for herbal supplements and a paddling pool.